30 Day Blogging Challenge: Day 5 – Game Character You Feel You Are Most Like (Or Wish You Were)

09.05.2011

Who wouldn’t want to be a character from a video game? The breakneck car chases, the teeth cutting duels, the epic battles between a god and a god. Some of these gaming characters seem like a perfect representation of what we would love to be. Sometimes, we feel like we share quite a bit with the characters on screen. Maybe we can relate to the lovable loser like PaRappa the Rapper, as he’s trying his best to impress Sunny Funny. With some many characters that have appeared over the years, everyone has gravitated towards one, or even several, that they feel they are similar to, or even wish they could be.

I never did find any character that I feel like is a splitting image of who I am. Probably because of how dynamic of a persona I possess. Nevertheless, there have been several characters that I would have dreams of being. I remember several night into my first foray into Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64, I would dream that I was Link, traveling back and forth between my youth and adult, venturing through Hyrle in my quest to locate princess Zelda. I’ve even had dreams about being Wesker from Marvel vs Capcom 3, from the amount of time that I would play the game in one sitting. But if there was one character I wouldn’t mind being, it’s one that I would assume would garner interest within this subject matter, but really isn’t:

Frank West: the photojournalist who was caught in the middle of a zombie infested hellhole. Once he dropped onto that rooftop in Dead Rising, he entered an unknown world, filled with undead, psychopaths on the loose, and a bunch of nonsensical weaponry at his disposal. Frank never lost sight of his story either; anytime he had a chance, he would snap a bunch of pictures, hoping that he would be able to escape the area and share them with the world. He as an ordinary man, put into an extraordinary situation, and handled it quite well for the most part.

Frank didn’t rely on superpowers or implausible physical augmentations (aside from mixed drinks, books….okay SOMETIMES he’ll use them) – when the going got rough, Frank got tough with what was around him. Hangers, nail-guns, bowling balls, shopping carts, he’ll even use a food tray to clear the way to the next impasse. Nearly everything around Frank can be used to fend off the legion of undead that lurch around him. Hell, Frank will even use books to enhance his performance in certain areas, which is implausible in its own right, but it shows how much of a badass he can be. He covers wars, participates in a war with the undead, and does his best to help corral anyone that’s still alive, leading them to safety.

Who wouldn’t want to be in the middle of the proverbial zombie genocide with a class act like Frank West? He has the know-how to keep himself alive with tens of thousands of zombies all around him, and still keeps his eye on the prize in the form of keeping a photo record of the events transpiring around him. If there was one aspect that I can relate to, it’s his determination to complete his story amidst the heavy pressures all around him. For every other aspect, from utilizing everything around him to survive, as well as traversing through the unknown with no second guessing himself, is who I wish I was from a video game character.

Jason V.

I am the Co-Editor-in-Chief here at Chocolate Lemon. Over the last 15 years, I have been writing gaming articles here and there, including my time with GameSages, a then IGN affiliated video game code database that's now owned by IGN, as well as my near four year stay on this very site. I'm quite the gaming enthusiast, have a somewhat "old school" soul, and enjoy a wide variety of geeky shows, movies and so on. Follow me on Twitter @Jas0nVelez